The Road to Publication - PT. 2

Tues, MAY 04, 2021 - 09:38

READ PART ONE HERE

So, Siltari had been rejected. I'd been rejected. Not as many times as J.K. Rowling, but who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to keep pitching this book for ten years.

Pitching is exhausting. It’s time consuming and kind of degrading. And I want to spend my days writing, damnit. Not begging and scraping. Not wading through a throng of hundreds of thousands and waving until some traditional publisher finally looks down from above and takes pity on me—

-whoa. Just one, cotton-pickin’ second, there. Was that sarcasm? Was I becoming… jaded ? I’d barely even waded into this world of gatekeepers. I’d barely tasted rejection. What right did I have to be so critical of something so tried and true?

Well…perhaps it was that book I read about the publishing industry, which had stressed how useless it was to try and make a living from writing? Perhaps it was hearing from published authors how much they were making, or their stories of disappointment once they’d finally signed that magical contract? Or, perhaps it was that course I’d done from a veteran of the traditional publishing world (with her 30 years of experience), siphoning my joy and excitement away by the lecture?

I looked over the notes I’d jotted down from that one…

…chances of getting picked up less than 0.1%…publisher won’t have any real budget to market my book even if I get signed…cover design would be out of my hands…publisher would only care about my work for one season, then drop it to focus on other projects…likely advance for new author only $2,000-10,000…expect you to bring your audience to them, not the other way around…
Right. So, why exactly was I excited about traditional publishing, again? All these years of work. All this trouble, and all these glittering prospects to look forward to, just for that fabled ‘prestige’? A little feather in my cap? What a load of knobbly-cheddar!

It was just six months after my attempts at pitching ‘Siltari’ when, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and weighing up the pros and cons, the realisation dawned that traditional publishing wasn’t for me. At least, not at this point in my journey. What was surprising was the fact that, when I finally decided to self-publish, I immediately felt a massive weight lift from my shoulders.

I realised I now had freedom. I’m a resourceful chap. I was a professional graphic and web-designer for 15 years. I’ve got experience in film, narration, and have some great connections. I work hard and am more driven than a Trabbi. I realised that it would be difficult. I realised that I had to keep expectations low. But I also realised: I could do this.

And here we are, another half-year later. It has indeed been a hell of a lot of work. But things are moving. I’m working down my strategy doc. I’ve been building my social media presence. I’ve dabbled in the art of building relations with bookstore-owners, rallied an army of friends and fans. I’ve organised marketing channels and crafted advertising materials. And most excitingly, I have printing and distribution with a great self-publishing house locked-in.

So, in August this year, 2021, The Torril City Mysterion will be my first published book.

Will this all be a disaster? Maybe. Will it ever become a viable source of income? Probably not. But that was never my reason for starting this journey. I genuinely feel I have awesome stories to tell and even if this is the path of most-resistance, then just like my books, I’m going to put my heart into it and come up with the best damned ending I can.

The Road to Publication - PT. 1

Wed, APR 28, 2021 - 13:16

Ah, traditional publication! Cue the heavenly chorus! What greater music is there to an aspiring author?

The steep, craggy road to publishing a book began for me in February of 2020. That’s when, after almost ten years of writing ‘The Binding of Siltari’, I began to seriously pitch it to publishers.

Of course, like a good little author, I didn’t just throw it about. I read and researched for months before sending those carefully crafted query letters. I listed publishers and agents, found out who they’d represented and tried to do a little personality sleuthing to see if they might be a good match. I found good reasons to approach each one of them and tailored my letters, accordingly. And, lucky me, I heard back from a whole five of those thirteen queries.

Seeing that first, unread reply in my inbox was a thrill — until I opened it. There, in line two, were the words, “Unfortunately, the story is not what I’m looking for, right now.”

I remember sitting straight and blinking. Not what she was looking for, right now? Alright, well, when would she be looking for it?

I was never to find out. The email ended with a cut-and-copy line wishing me all the best for the future, (in fact, on second look, the entire email might have been cut-and-copied…) and this response set the general tone for all the others I eventually received.

But my book was good, wasn’t it? Great, Auntie Nelly’s Chocolate Drops , I’d worked so hard on it! It wasn’t something I’d banged out in a month. I’d kept my expo trim! My dialogue was punchy! My character arcs drove the story, damnit! Robert McKee, how had I failed you!?

I mean, I wasn’t going to have to… self-publish , was I?

I shuddered.

No. I had worked too hard and had too much pride for that, damnit! Nobody should be subjected to such indignity. The self-publishing world was a latrine, wasn't it? A fail-party, where the armies of the unschooled and unfit poured their collective drivel. A world riddled with punctuation errors and poor-formatting…of cheap, fiverr-produced covers and prices, $2.99 and under…

No. I would never -…it was traditional publishing or nothing. I mean, J.K. Rowling! Remember how long she tried to get published? I certainly do. In every single supportive text-message I’ve received, over every single coffee-house chat, since then, nobody has let me forget it. And I’ve had to invent new expressions of gratefulness to deal with the inevitable reminders.

READ PART TWO HERE

The Quadrilogy Is Over

Tue, FEB 02, 2021 - 15:07

- CLICKCLICK! -

I pushed my chair back and stood, gazing at my computer screen for a moment without moving. I was done, but finishing a project always brings with it a Bhuja-Mix™ of emotions, and this was a large project.

It was December of 2020 and after almost a year’s work, I had just finished narrating the last in a series of fantasy books for a wonderful client.

My feelings were all over the place. I was thrilled to have completed such an audacious project, in which I had the pleasure (and pain) of voicing over 50 characters and experiencing a fantastical journey — both literary and professionally — but now it was done and the client and I wouldn’t be working together again for a while. Perhaps ever. I wouldn’t meet the characters again, nor would I traverse the world I’d been living in for so long.

That’s a strange feeling.

On such projects, when you’re conversing every other day, dealing with feedback, getting and sometimes giving advice, and basically helping each other to reach this milestone, and when you’re immersed in someone else’s (or occasionally your own) work, it’s not unusual to develop a bond to a client and the material. I certainly do, anyway.

Perhaps that’s something more common in narration; a strange gig by any measure. It’s lonely at times. It’s laborious. It’s technical. And it hurts. Some days I step out of the booth and don't want to open my mouth again until the next day. Sometimes, not even then. Joints and muscles ache, and going into that little void day after day, night after night, only to hear yourself is a test of endurance and a strange game of testing your own limits, in which damaging your own voice often spells ‘Game-Over’.

It’s tough to keep your energy up. It’s tough not to drift and lose the connection to the material. It’s tough when you listen to your work and find it sounds different to what you wanted, then scrap sentences and paragraphs — even entire chapters and character parts. But there’s certainly a reward at the end of it all.

I think we're all storytellers by nature. I love telling stories and always have, even before I tried to amass crowds of students at lunchbreak for fantastical journeys before the next-period bell rang. I love to write, and I love to read, and since I began narrating I’ve discovered a love of reading aloud.

I find a lot of pleasure narrating, and as with anyone who loves their profession, I try to learn more with every project. So when a client gets that final recording and replies with joy in exclamation marks and superlatives, I’m over the moon.

That happened on this particular project, and I was reminded once again that the hard work is worth it. Not only had I developed a great professional relationship with a client, I’ve also been priveliged to turn my skills to something I can be proud of.

If you’re a fan of fantasy, then I really hope you get a chance to hear my take on the Seven Citadels quadrilogy by British author Geraldine Harris. Written in the late 70s and 80s, this series’ rights were recently acquired by a film producer in Los Angeles who contacted me for the narration. It’s a curious, exciting and touching story full of bizarre and interesting characters, which will certainly make an amazing cinematic experience. I hope it made an interesting series of audibooks!

I hope to go into this series a little more in a future post, but until then...

Ciao!

Masterclass: The Verdict

SUN, JAN 03, 2021 - 11:28

I promised in an earlier post (see ' Masterclass ') that I’d follow up my experience with Masterclass, so here we go.

I’m always trying to improve my writing — whether it be through finding tips from pros, reading books, or coercing friends into giving feedback — but last October I took the plunge and dropped €200 on a subscription to Masterclass , the web-based learning service where one can take classes taught by prominent names in various industries.

In my last post, I related how I’d found the course by Margaret Atwood enjoyable but not that helpful. I’d also done David Baldacci ’s course and found his far more structured, with better delivery and a more technical approach. So my views were a bit muddled. Since then, however, I’ve done every writing course they have, and I think I can help other writers curious about taking the plunge to make up their minds — because I’ve made up mine.

The verdict is basically this: At first, I honestly felt that the offerings on Masterclass weren’t worth the price. The courses seemed very hit and miss, they are all relatively short, and the homework is kind of ‘meh’.

Some of these opinions haven’t changed. But I can elaborate, and there are two upshots…

Firstly, yes, the courses are hit and miss. Some might be strangely structured and felt like the instructor simply sat down and babbled for a couple of hours, after which these rantings were cut and ‘ordered’ to try and make a coherent series of units. R.L. Stine ’s course made me never want to write again, it made writing seem that inconsequential and pointless, and David Mamet 's felt like he’d been coerced into giving a scathing, almost sarcastic review of the industry rather than a helpful guide to writing for stage, (also, the amount of time he spent sketching on a whiteboard while trying to explain the simple point: “You need complications in your plot,” was borderline ridiculous).

Others — notably those from Dan Brown , Joyce Carol Oates , Malcolm Gladwell , James Patterson and Aaron Sorkin — were the opposite. I could tell that a great deal of planning went into them, and their content and delivery were excellent. These courses made me feel I was actually learning, and their words still stick with me when I sit down to write.

For these courses alone, I think the price was worth it.

Then there’s the problem of the courses being short. At around 2.5 - 3 hours each, it’s true that all these instructors have their work cut out for them to compress a lot of knowledge into a short sitting and I do understand the challenge. But honestly, it all feels too compressed. They really just manage to squeeze in the basics, the surface-level tips, anecdotes and advice as each unit zips rapidly by, then BAM!, you're done. This is great for people with short attention spans, and it is nice to have things be concise but my hope is that in the future, Masterclass will add a ‘season 2’ to a lot of these courses. That would allow a deeper-dive and really allow these pros to give proper instruction.

That said, I have already noticed that a few new courses have popped up since I began my subscription and this is fantastic. So even if there is no ‘season 2’ for many of these courses, it means that new content from new artists and industry professionals will continue to come.

I have to admit: I’ve been content with my subscription. €200 is steep, but I personally feel I’ve gained enough interesting insights to justify it, not just on the writing process, but on the writing industry, the ins- and outs of publishing and even how to manage the promotional side of being a writer. Another way to look at it: I imagine that paying for a web-seminar from a bunch of pros during COVID would be much the same experience.

Bottom line: If you’ve been writing for years or you’re already published, you probably won’t glean much from Masterclass. But for the beginner or aspiring writer, this service provides both advice, encouragement and some valuable ‘aha!’s which might otherwise take a lot of time, trial and error to attain.

I hope this review has been helpful.

Jim

Masterclass

MON, OCT 19, 2020 - 17:04

Last week, I did something I don't usually do. I actually let an online ad get me interested in something.

Now, YouTube had been hounding me for over a month with this crap, but for the first time (I think ever ), I actually liked what I was seeing. So, I went and checked out this ' Masterclass ' thing. Website looked good. Courses looked interesting. 'Aight,' I thought, and dropped €200.

For those of you who don't know; Masterclass is a streaming-video service which provides 'classes' taught by celebrities and big names in various industries. And for that price, you get a one-year subscription and can 'learn' everything from talking like an astro-physicist to playing the ukulele. At least that's the idea.

My first impressions? Neat, I suppose. It's neat to have a little look behind the curtain at how professionals work and it's neat to hear what they have to share. In a week, I've done two of the writing courses. One by Margaret Atwood , and another from David Baldacci . And while I enjoyed them both, their approaches were very different and I do have some comments.

Firstly, all these 'courses' are short. Too short. Each seems to run to about 2.5 hours and if you're an audiobook or fantasy book buff like I am, that feels like a prologue. Then there was the structure of each. In Atwood's course, she tended to speak much more candidly and give advice from the heart, and that was nice. But unfortunately, for me it also wasn't that helpful. Being the first course I watched and really liking Atwood's work, I was quite disappointed. David Baldacci's course, on the other hand, seemed far better planned out, and I found it far more in-depth, structured, and helpful.

I think the main problem with all these courses, however, is that they just aren't (as the name suggests) 'Masterclasses'. I feel they're more like 'primers'; short talks given by pros, and I was a bit peeved that I already knew almost all of what I heard. Having written for a few years, you'll discover most of these things intuitively. Or learn from others. Or read articles and books.

Now, not to say it wasn't helpful at all. Sure, I picked up the odd, new tidbit, but I feel Masterclass is actually aimed at beginners to the industry/craft. It's also possible that in the future, some of these pros will come back and do a 'part two', and if that happens, this might end up being worth the money. But right now, I'd say hold onto that purse-string! I'll keep going and report back, again.

Ciao!